blog.eliduke.com

i really enjoy twitter. it has been especially helpful during my time here in Antarctica because of how quick and simple it is to use. sometimes i don’t have the time or energy to post to this blog and sometimes the bandwidth here at McMurdo won’t allow it. twitter is the perfect replacement. it’s quick, it’s simple, and it’s to the point. if you haven’t been following me on twitter, you should start now.

anyhoo, when i was back in the states i used twitter almost exclusively with my cellphone, sending updates via text message. since i’ve been down here in Antarctica i’ve been interacting with twitter through a web browser a lot more. as a result i’ve become much more familiar with how their web interface works, but also how it doesn’t work. one area in particular that i was getting frustrated with was the @replies.

[for those of you that don't know, here is an example: if i wanted to reply to a tweet (an individual post on twitter) that my brother posted i would begin my tweet with @n8duke.]

the annoying part about @replies is that you have to type in “@username” each time you want to reply. sometimes the username is long and annoying, sometimes you might misspell it, and then the reply won’t go where it’s supposed to.

i had an idea, so i sent twitter an email:

From: eli
Date: Sun, Jan 27, 2008 at 12:11 AM
Subject: i hope this is alright…
To: Twitter

Twitter,

i emailed you a while ago about an api question. remember me?

well, i have a suggestion to make about twitter, and i didn’t know who else to turn to and i figured that you’d be as good a person as anyone. i imagine that y’all get all kinds of “really good suggestions”, but i truely believe that this is a good one.

so, here goes…

i enjoy @replies just as much as the next guy, but i hate (i know that’s a strong word) having to type the “@username” into the field every time i want to reply. that would be like having to type in someone’s email address every time i wanted to reply to an email. ridiculous, right? we just click “reply”.

why not implement a feature that would allow you to click a tweet-specific indicator (a “reply” link, maybe?) which would automagically insert “@username” in the text box above? you could easily slip that in right after the {star} icon…

or, is this idea like so last week and you already have it in the works?

eli

i got a response back from twitter a few days later saying that they had not heard that idea before and that it would be submitted to the team. then, lo and behold, a few days later i noticed this:

do you see that little arrow after the star icon? that’s me, baby! that’s all me!